As a reward for impressive swims at the World University Games, Italy has added two swimmers to their 2013 World Championship roster.
Michele Santucci was added to the men’s 400 free relay after swimming a 49.30 in Kazan at the Universiade. That was two-tenths of a second faster than he had been at Italy’s National Championship meet in April. Santucci swam the 3rd leg on Italy’s 7th-place relay at the Olympics and his 48.8 split in prelims is likely what salvaged an otherwise lackluster prelims swim where the Italians snuck in as the 89th qualifiers. He repeated his split in finals.
The other addition is Luca Pizzini, who fought through a crowded Italian breaststroke group to take a spot in the men’s 200 breaststroke. He was a 2:10.99 in Kazan, capping off the best season of his career (save for one flukish swim in 2009 in polyurethane). His best time last year was only a 2:12.3.
Pizzini was the winner of the 200 breaststroke at Italian Nationals, and Santucci was 5th in the 100 free at the same meet. Pizzini was shy of the existing Italian standard (2:11.10) but has now hit that standard, and Santucci has proven a worthy-enough contributor to give the Italians comfort of taking a relay alternate for a prelims swim.
Though this is after the July 1st FINA deadline for additional swimmers to be added to rosters, there is a clause in Italian qualifying giving the coaches the right to add to the lineup at their discretion, though not replace those who qualified properly at Nationals: the lone specified qualifying meet.
The likely scenario here is that several swimmers going to the World University Games were officially entered on the Italian roster, but weren’t declared eligible to participate by the Italians until seeing the results of this meet. All of this is well within FINA rules.
The swimming part of the World Championships begins July 28th in Barcelona, Spain.
Nope. In 2011, they were out 2 days before the beginning of the meet.